Table Of ContentTHE HORUS HERESY®
IT IS A TIME OF LEGEND.
THE GALAXY IS IN FLAMES. THE EMPEROR’S GLORIOUS VISION FOR HUMANITY
IS IN RUINS. HIS FAVOURED SON, HORUS, HAS TURNED FROM HIS FATHER’S
LIGHT AND EMBRACED CHAOS.
HIS ARMIES, THE MIGHTY AND REDOUBTABLE SPACE MARINES, ARE LOCKED IN
A BRUTAL CIVIL WAR. ONCE, THESE ULTIMATE WARRIORS FOUGHT SIDE BY SIDE
AS BROTHERS, PROTECTING THE GALAXY AND BRINGING MANKIND BACK INTO
THE EMPEROR’S LIGHT. NOW THEY ARE DIVIDED.
SOME REMAIN LOYAL TO THE EMPEROR, WHILST OTHERS HAVE SIDED WITH
THE WARMASTER. PRE-EMINENT AMONGST THEM, THE LEADERS OF THEIR
THOUSANDS-STRONG LEGIONS ARE THE PRIMARCHS. MAGNIFICENT,
SUPERHUMAN BEINGS, THEY ARE THE CROWNING ACHIEVEMENT OF THE
EMPEROR’S GENETIC SCIENCE. THRUST INTO BATTLE AGAINST ONE ANOTHER,
VICTORY IS UNCERTAIN FOR EITHER SIDE.
WORLDS ARE BURNING. AT ISSTVAN V, HORUS DEALT A VICIOUS BLOW AND
THREE LOYAL LEGIONS WERE ALL BUT DESTROYED. WAR WAS BEGUN, A
CONFLICT THAT WILL ENGULF ALL MANKIND IN FIRE. TREACHERY AND
BETRAYAL HAVE USURPED HONOUR AND NOBILITY. ASSASSINS LURK IN EVERY
SHADOW. ARMIES ARE GATHERING. ALL MUST CHOOSE A SIDE OR DIE.
HORUS MUSTERS HIS ARMADA, TERRA ITSELF THE OBJECT OF HIS WRATH.
SEATED UPON THE GOLDEN THRONE, THE EMPEROR WAITS FOR HIS WAYWARD
SON TO RETURN. BUT HIS TRUE ENEMY IS CHAOS, A PRIMORDIAL FORCE THAT
SEEKS TO ENSLAVE MANKIND TO ITS CAPRICIOUS WHIMS.
THE SCREAMS OF THE INNOCENT, THE PLEAS OF THE RIGHTEOUS RESOUND TO
THE CRUEL LAUGHTER OF DARK GODS. SUFFERING AND DAMNATION AWAIT
ALL SHOULD THE EMPEROR FAIL AND THE WAR BE LOST.
THE AGE OF KNOWLEDGE AND ENLIGHTENMENT HAS ENDED. THE AGE OF
DARKNESS HAS BEGUN.
DRAMATIS PERSONAE
The XVIII Legion ‘Salamanders’
VULKAN, Primarch, the Lord of Drakes ARTELLUS NUMEON, Pyre Captain, and
Vulkan’s equerry LEODRAKK, Pyre Guard SKATAR’VAR, Pyre Guard VARRUN, Pyre
Guard
GANNE, Pyre Guard
IGATARON, Pyre Guard ATANARIUS, Pyre Guard NEMETOR, Captain, 15th Company
Reconnaissance K’GOSI, Captain, Pyroclast of the 21st Company SHEN’RA,
Techmarine The VIII Legion ‘Night Lords’
KONRAD CURZE, Primarch, the ‘Night Haunter’
The X Legion ‘Iron Hands’
FERRUS MANUS, Primarch, the Gorgon DOMADUS, Battle-brother and unofficial
quartermaster VERUD PERGELLEN, Legionary sniper The XIX Legion ‘Raven
Guard’
CORVUS CORAX, Primarch, the Ravenlord HRIAK, Librarian, Codicier AVUS,
Battle-brother The XVII Legion ‘Word Bearers’
EREBUS, Dark Apostle, disgraced First Chaplain VALDREKK ELIAS, Dark Apostle,
sworn to the service of Erebus BARTHUSA NAREK, Huntsman, former legionary
Vigilator Non-Legion personnel
SERIPH, Remembrancer VERACE, Remembrancer CAEREN SEBATON, Frontier
archaeologist
From scorched earth…
‘Vulkan lives.’
Two words. Two grating words. They closed around me like a rusty trap,
snaring me with their savage teeth. So many dead… No, slain. And yet…
Vulkan.
Lives.
I felt each one reverberate inside my skull like a triphammer striking a tuning
fork, pressing at my temples, every syllable pulsing headache-red. They were
little more than a mocking whisper, these two simple words, mocking me
because I survived when I should have died. Because I lived, they did not.
Surprise, awe, or perhaps it was the simple desire not to be heard that made the
speaker craft his words so quietly. In any case, the voice that gave utterance to
them was confident and full of undeniable charisma.
I knew its cadence, its timbre, as familiarly as I knew my own. I recognised
the voice of my gaoler. And I, too, rasped as I declared it to him.
‘Horus…’
For all my brother’s obvious and demonstrative puissance, even in his voice, I
could barely speak. It was as if I’d been buried for a long time and my throat was
hoarse from swallowing too much dirt. I had yet to open my eyes, for the lids
were leaden and stung as if they’d been washed out with neat promethium.
Promethium.
The word brought back a sense memory, the image of a battlefield swathed in
smog and redolent of death. Blood saturated the air. It soaked the black sand
underfoot. Smoke clung to banners edged in fire. In fragments, I recalled a battle
unlike any other that I or my Legion had ever fought. Such vast forces, such
strength of arms, almost elemental in their fury. Brothers killed brothers, a death
toll in the tens of thousands. Maybe more.
I saw Ferrus die, even though I wasn’t present at his murder, but in my mind I
saw it. We had a bond, he and I, forged in more than fraternal blood. We were
too alike not to.
This was Isstvan V that I saw. A black, benighted world swarmed by a sea of
legionaries bent on mutual destruction. Battle tanks by the hundreds, Titans
roaming the horizon in murderous packs, drop-ships flooding the sky and
choking it with their death-smoke and their engine fumes.
choking it with their death-smoke and their engine fumes.
Chaos. Utter, unimaginable chaos.
That word had a different meaning now.
Further snatches of the massacre returned to me. I saw a hillside, a company of
battle tanks at the summit. Their cannons were aimed low, firing off ordnance
into our ranks and punishing us against the anvil.
Armour cracked. Fire rained. Bodies broke.
I charged with the Pyre Guard, but they soon lost pace with me as my anger
overtook my capacity for reason. I hit the tanks on my own at first, like a
hammer. With my hands I tore into the line of armour, battered it, roaring my
defiance at a sky drenched crimson.
As my sons caught up to my wrath, light and fire arrived in the wake of my
assault. It tore open the sky in a great strip of blinding magnesium white. Those
nearby shut their eyes to it, but I saw the missiles hit. I watched the detonation
and beheld the fire as it spread across the world like a boiling ocean.
Then there was darkness… for a time, until I remembered waking, but dazed.
My war-plate was burned. I had been thrown from the battle. Alone, I staggered
to my feet and saw a fallen son.
It was Nemetor.
Like an infant I cradled him, raising Dawnbringer aloft and crying out my
anguish for all the good it would do. Because no matter how much you wish for
it, the dead do not come back. Not really. And if they do, if by some fell craft
you can restore them, they are forever changed. Revenants. Only a god can bring
back the dead and return them to the living, and we had all been told that gods
did not exist. I would come to understand the great folly and undeniable truth of
that in the time that followed.
My enemies reached me in a flood, stabbing with knives and bludgeoning with
clubs. Some were midnight-clad, others wrapped in iron. I killed almost three
score before they took Nemetor from my arms. And as I knelt there, bruised and
bleeding, a shadow fell across me.
I asked, ‘Why, brother?’
And these next words were freshest in my memory, because of what Curze
said as he loomed over me.
‘Because you’re the one who’s here.’
It wasn’t the answer I was expecting. My question had a much wider meaning
than what Curze took it to be. Perhaps there was no answer, for isn’t it inevitable
that one day a son will rebel against his father and desire to succeed him, even if
that succession meant committing patricide?
Though my eyes were gummed with blood, my helmet gone, I swore I saw
Though my eyes were gummed with blood, my helmet gone, I swore I saw
Curze smiling as he looked down on me as at one of his slaves. The bastard.
Even now, I believe he found it amusing. All the horror, the dirty shame of
treachery and how it stuck to all of our skins. We primarchs, we who were
supposed to be the best of all men, turned out to be the very worst.
Konrad had always enjoyed irony like that. It brought us all down to his level.
‘You are full of surprises.’
At first I thought it was Curze again – my sense of time and space was
colliding but not connecting, making it hard to focus properly – but he never said
that to me at Isstvan; he never said anything else after that moment.
No, it was Horus speaking. That cultured tonality, that deep basso which had
made this treachery possible. Only he could have done it. I just didn’t know
why. Not yet.
I opened my eyes at last and saw before me the patrician countenance of a
once noble man. Some would call him a demigod, I suppose. Perhaps we all
were in our different ways, but then gods were supposed to be superstition
honoured by lesser, credulous men.
And yet here we all were. Giants, warrior-kings, superhuman in every aspect.
One of us even had wings; beautiful, white, angelic wings. Looking back now, I
cannot fathom why no one looked at Sanguinius and wondered if he were really
a god.
‘Lupercal,’ I began, but Horus cut me off with a mirthless laugh.
‘Oh, Vulkan, you really were badly beaten.’
He was armoured in black, a suit I had only seen him wearing once before and
which bore no resemblance to either the Luna Wolves of his origin, or the Sons
of Horus that he led afterwards. As much as he wore it, the black also bled off
him in waves like it wasn’t armour at all but some dark anima enclosing him. I
had felt it before, caught some inkling of the man he was becoming, but to my
shame did nothing to prevent it. An eye glowered in the midriff, blazing and
orange like Nocturne’s sun but without the honest heat of natural fire.
He gripped my chin with a taloned power fist, and I felt the claws pinch.
‘What do you want with me? To kill me, like you killed my sons? Where is
this place you have me imprisoned?’
As my eyes adjusted, healing through the gifts my exceptional father gave me,
I saw only darkness. It reminded me of the shadow Curze cast over me when I
was at his mercy on the plains of Isstvan.
‘You are right about one thing,’ Horus said, his voice changing as I grew more
lucid, becoming gradually sharper and more rigid, ‘you are a prisoner. A very
dangerous one, I think. As to my purpose,’ he laughed again, ‘I honestly don’t
know yet.’
I blinked, once, twice, and the face before me transformed into another, one I
could scarcely believe.
‘Roboute?’
My brother, the primarch of the XIII Legion Ultramarines, had drawn a
gladius. It looked ceremonial, never blooded.
‘Is that who you see?’ Guilliman asked, eyes narrowing before he slid the
blade into my bare flesh.
Only then did I realise that I was unarmoured, and sense the fetters around my
wrists, ankles and neck. The gladius bit deep, burning at first but then growing
colder around the wound. It was sunk into my chest, all the way to the hilt.
My eyes widened. ‘What… what… is this?’
Breath knifed through my lungs, bubbling up through the blood rising in my
throat, making me gurgle.
He laughed. ‘It’s a sword, Vulkan.’
I gritted my teeth, anger clamping my mouth shut.
His voice changed again as Guilliman leaned in close and I could no longer
see his face, but felt his charnel breath upon my cheek.
‘Oh, I think I am going to like this, brother. You definitely won’t, but I will.’
He hissed as if savouring the thought of whatever tortures he was already
concocting, and it put me in mind of soft, chiropteran wings. My jaw hardened
as I discovered the true identity of my tormentor, his name escaping through my
clenched teeth like a curse.
‘Curze.’
Persona non grata…
A figure armoured in crimson stumbled into the chamber as if through a cut in a
veil, a literal knife-thrust that parted realities and allowed him to escape into
blessed darkness.
Valdrekk Elias had been waiting in the sanctum, waiting for days for his
master’s return. It was foreseen, his humbling at the Warmaster’s hands. It was
known that Horus would challenge the Pantheon and it was known that his own
father would forsake him. A martyr’s cause was not for him, however. He was
destined for greater and everlasting glory.
So it had been told to Elias, and so he had waited.
Now he cradled a wretched figure in his arms, torn and broken, savaged by the
Now he cradled a wretched figure in his arms, torn and broken, savaged by the
very warriors who were meant to be his allies.
‘Blessed master, you are injured…’ Elias’s voice trembled, in fear, in shame,
in anger. There was blood all over the floor. Rivulets of dark red ran into sigils
marked upon the iron tiles, casting off an eldritch glow as each engraving was
filled with blood.
Elias muttered to keep the lambent glow from growing into something he
could not control. He doubted his master would be of any use at that moment.
The chamber was a holy sanctum; blood should not be spilled there idly.
Head bowed, facing the floor, his master was shaking and mewling in pain.
No… it wasn’t pain.
It was laughter.
Elias turned him over and saw the ruin of Erebus’s face, white eyes staring
from a skull wrapped in blood-soaked meat. His red-rimed teeth chattered in a
lipless mouth, clacking together in a rictus grin before parting as he breathed.
Elias looked at him aghast. ‘What has been done to you?’
Erebus tried and failed to answer, spitting up a gobbet of crimson.
Disciple lifted master, carried him in both arms despite the weight of his war-
plate, holding his partly insensate form across his body.
Parting with a blast of escaping pressure and the whirr of concealed servos, the
sanctum doors opened into a corridor. The apothecarion was close.
‘A lesson…’ Erebus croaked finally, gurgling his words through blood.
Elias paused. Blood was dripping with a steady plinking rhythm as it struck the
deck plates underfoot. He leaned in, the stink of copper growing more intense as
he closed. ‘Yes?’
‘A lesson… for you.’
Erebus was delirious, and barely conscious. Whatever had been done to him
had almost killed him. Whoever had done it had almost killed him.
‘Speak it, master,’ Elias whispered with all the fervour and devotion of a
fanatic.
Erebus might have lost favour in some quarters, with his father certainly, but
he still had supporters. They were few, but they were also ardent. The Dark
Apostle’s voice shrank to a whisper. Even for one with Elias’s enhanced hearing,
words were difficult to discern.
‘Sharpen ours, blunt theirs…’
‘Master? I don’t know what you are saying. Tell me, what must I do?’
With a strength belied by his frail condition, Erebus seized Elias by the throat.
His eyes, those ever-staring lidless orbs of pure hate, glared. It was like he was
